social security

Perhaps gay rights activists in this country are aiming too high. Rather than create massive grassroots campaigns impacting local and state law, they’ve gone right to the top. Listening to Andrew Wilkow this afternoon, he made an interesting argument about the gay marriage debate: that the typical arguments in support of gay marriage don’t really [...]

I know, you’re completely shocked by the news that the Social Security “surplus” will be gone by 2033, meaning the system starts bleeding cash at that time. All sarcasm aside, what’s scary is that in 2010 the year of reckoning was 2037! Any bets that the crisis will hit sooner, especially with over $2 trillion [...]

It’s simple mathematics: the demographic Baby Boom began in 1946 and lasted until about 1964. Because of their size, this generation has affected each phase of life they’ve moved through in massive ways. They’re about to do it again: if you add 65 to 1946 you get 2011. As of January 1 of this year, [...]

Who on God’s green Earth actually believed that Obamacare was going to really lower health care costs in this country? That’s putting blinders on the economic history of government market interference, as well as being counter intuitive because lowering costs would make the health insurance industry stronger and more popular — two things that can’t [...]

In the same week that the largest new entitlement program in 45 years just became law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has issued numbers indicating that Social Security is going to pay-out more than it takes in not in 2016 as projected but in 2010! The official “day of reckoning” has been moved from 2041 [...]

Victor Davis Hansen has written a piece entitled Beware of ‘Comprehensive’ Anything, in which he details how Comprehensive legislation rarely becomes law, and any that does is usually disastrous. Just take a look at the ‘Comprehensive’ bills or strategies we’ve had in the past few years: Comprehensive health care reform Comprehensive climate change reform (cap-and-trade) [...]

Back in 2005, with President George W. Bush at a high point having just won re-election, he pushed Social Security reform as his top policy initiative. That initiative ultimately failed, and cost him much of the political capital that he had gained from winning in 2004. Besides the obvious points of not selling the solution [...]

We could all sense over the last year or two that Peggy Noonan has wandered a bit from the reservation. She caught a touch of Obama fever a year ago and began sounding like the perfect example of the kind of Republican who was getting ready to drift in the glorious minority for a generation [...]

We all know that the sub-prime mortgage mess precipitated a housing bubble that got us into this economic disaster we now find ourselves in. Yet while many are trying to convince us that the economy is recovering, further disaster looms on the horizon. Without getting into the whole dangerous situation that the massive amount of [...]

It’s funny. Some of the veteran teachers I work with indicated last November that the largest pay increases they ever received occurred during Reagan and Dubya’s time in office; that in fact when Dems are in the White House, raises were more like meager cost of living adjustments which ended up netting less than the [...]

Perusing the web today, I found this video of Trends Research’s Gerald Celente on Hot Air, and thought it was worth posting here too. This guy is great! He pulls no punches and tells it like he sees it. He had been forecasting doom and gloom for the housing market years ago based on trends [...]

Word has it from various sources that the Democrats, reading the cards (the lightning-struck Tower probably), are ready to forget bipartisan support for Obamacare and may jam it through anyway. All this blaming of Republicans for obstructionism is laughable since with a clear majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate, the Dems can do anything they [...]

Early yesterday I wrote about the current crisis in the U.S. Fiscal system in the areas of unemployment and our national debt, and how they are leading indicators towards a major financial collapse. Today, there are several pieces of news that add credence to that theory. First, the April retail sales and foreclosure numbers were [...]

Odds are that a President who has done more than any single President in our history to rattle the markets and obliterate retirement accounts every time he opens his mouth would not be very popular. However, Obama remains very high in the polls despite his War on Capitalism. Michael Boskin, writing in the WSJ Online Oped had this to say about [...]

First, there was the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) which was the first nauseating bailout last fall. Well, tax-cheat and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has an idea about what to do now that TARP has not really helped get the markets moving: what Liz Moyer calls “BARF”, or the Bad Asset Repository Fund! Here’s the [...]

The news surrounding the scam perpetrated by Bernard Madoff has been widely publicized in the last few days. Madoff, using the classic Ponzi scheme, defrauded investors of over $50 billion dollars, possibly the largest private-sector scandal, and certainly the largest private-sector Ponzi scheme in history (of course, Washington stands by to give Madoff’s victims a [...]

President Bush and Congress are close to a deal on a $150 billion economic “stimulus” package. The package includes a temporary suspension of the 10% income bracket, meaning that everyone who fell in this bracket would receive up to $800 ($1200 for married couples) in the form of a rebate. In addition, the plan would [...]